


River

by frumplebump



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 17:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4754432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frumplebump/pseuds/frumplebump
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end has finally come for Bakura.</p>
            </blockquote>





	River

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2005, posted here with minor edits for style only.

It gets cold at night in Egypt, especially here on the river, but never this cold. I feel like my bones are ice at their core. I want to leave the deck of the ship, but I don’t think I can move. It’s not just the cold—I’m waiting for someone, I don’t know who. But I know when he arrives, because suddenly the ice melts and I feel as if my whole self is flowing away, out of me, lost like spilled water.

I turn my head to look at the bank. Someone is standing there, and from this distance I should be able to make out his face in the moonlight, but all I can see is a crooked smile. He raises his hand, and then I’m at his side, the soles of my boots sinking in the damp sand of the river bank.

“It’s too bad you couldn’t play this time, Malik,” he says. He’s still grinning, and his head is slightly bowed so that his hair falls shining across his eyes, veiling them from me. “I could have used someone like you.”

“Bakura?”

I know it’s him, even though I’ve never seen him like this—the person he must have once been. He tilts his head so that I can see one eye. He’s laughing at me without making a sound.

“Who else?” he asks. “You know, I got attacked by that damn Winged Dragon of Ra again. I liked it much better when you had it, even if you never did use it right.” He tosses his head back. “I still think of you when I see it.”

“It wasn’t mine.”

“Oh, what, are you going to repent of all your evils now?” He chuckles. “Don’t disappoint me, Malik.”

“Why are you still here?”

He spreads his arms. “I’m not here. I’m gone. I should’ve died more times than I can recall but that was it, finally.”

For some reason that makes me smile. He’s still smiling too, harsh and crazy but harmless, now.

“You better not forget me, you useless little bastard,” he tells me.

“Is that what you came here to say?”

He laughs. “Were you hoping for an ‘I love you’? I didn’t think you were that sentimental.”

“Go to hell, Bakura.”

“I’m on my way.” He shifts closer to me and now I can see more of his face. I can see the scar under his right eye, and I imagine the knife and the wound and the blood, and wonder how, after all, he did manage to stay around for three thousand years. “I’m only here now because you want it,” he says.

“Oh, I’m sure.”

“I’m dying now, Malik, and don’t you think it’s about time?” His grin widens; he’s way too amused with himself. “Want a goodbye kiss?”

I don’t answer, because the cold in me is growing again, swelling in my throat. He reaches for me and I can’t move. His touch on me is a wrenching freezing pain; I close my eyes, and I can feel each of his fingers on my shoulders burning like ice. He presses his cheek against mine, coaxing me to tilt my head, and then he kisses me, and it feels like my own last breath leaving my body. I feel a tear slide down the side of my face.

When I open my eyes, gasping to catch my breath, I see only the near-darkness of my room on the ship. As I try to slow my breathing, I close my eyes again and cover my face with my arms.


End file.
